11B97
Encyclopedia
11B97 was a Soviet
nuclear electric rocket
engine developed from 1978 through 1986. It was designed with enough propellent to work for 16,000 hours and the nuclear reactor would have been three years of life. It would have been capable of moving up to 100 tonne
s of mass to a geostationary orbit
, but was never flown.
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
nuclear electric rocket
Nuclear electric rocket
In a nuclear electric rocket, nuclear thermal energy is changed into electrical energy that is used to power one of the electrical propulsion technologies. Technically the powerplant is nuclear, not the propulsion system, but the terminology is standard. A number of heat-to-electricity schemes...
engine developed from 1978 through 1986. It was designed with enough propellent to work for 16,000 hours and the nuclear reactor would have been three years of life. It would have been capable of moving up to 100 tonne
Tonne
The tonne, known as the metric ton in the US , often put pleonastically as "metric tonne" to avoid confusion with ton, is a metric system unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. The tonne is not an International System of Units unit, but is accepted for use with the SI...
s of mass to a geostationary orbit
Geostationary orbit
A geostationary orbit is a geosynchronous orbit directly above the Earth's equator , with a period equal to the Earth's rotational period and an orbital eccentricity of approximately zero. An object in a geostationary orbit appears motionless, at a fixed position in the sky, to ground observers...
, but was never flown.
See also
- NERVANERVANERVA is an acronym for Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application, a joint program of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and NASA managed by the Space Nuclear Propulsion Office until both the program and the office ended at the end of 1972....
, the American project for nuclear thermal propulsion - RD-0410RD-0410RD-0410 was a Soviet nuclear thermal rocket engine developed from 1965 through the 1980s using liquid hydrogen propellant...